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I'm teaching students online and find they have a lot of trouble doing calculations involving scientific notation. I think the reason is that as they are doing the calculations, what appears in the display is not intuitive--that is they do not actually see something on the screen similar to what you'd write on a piece of paper while doing calculations.

Is there an iPhone app that does that? Preferably this would mean "x 10" would be shown along with exponents suitably formatted.

Edit: I found something like what I want online. I'd much prefer an app, and this also has some features I don't like. But it also demonstrates well the key features I'm after: when you click a button (EXP) it shows "x10" and then allows entry of a superscripted exponent just as you would write out by hand.

So I've provided an animation to demonstrate its use for simple calculation, also shown as in image below.

enter image description here enter image description here

I'm not promoting this online calculator, and it does have some features I don't like. But it's the only alternative I've found so far. It does work on my iPhone, but would prefer an app. It does appear they have one -- however, to get it requires downloading other software and I didn't feel comfortable doing that.

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  • Why not teach them the notation? They’re going to need it eventually. Besides, if they haven’t figured it out on paper, why are they moving to a calculator?
    – Allan
    Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 7:12
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    Of course I do that. Please address my question.
    – Tony M
    Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 7:14
  • Not sure what you are looking for here, especially with the constraint of not wanting to download additional apps. There is a calculator app within iOS, if that doesn’t work for your use case which options are left?
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 9:51
  • Otherwise, apps like Calca or Solver may work. PCalc allows to enter values in scientific notation but shows them normally.
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 10:08
  • The calculator app within iOS certainly can do the calculations, but the question is how understandable it is for a student? Like most calculators, that app requires a certain level of understanding about how calculators handle such calculations. By contrast, the animated gif I provided shows the calculation being carried out in a way that closely (but not perfectly) corresponds to how the student learns to do the job by hand. I do want to download an app, but doing so outside of the Apple ecosystem introduces danger and so I want to minimize that and maybe I was wrong in this case. Not sure.
    – Tony M
    Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 10:17

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